Battery

Apple is now offering a free replacement battery program for select iPhone 5 models that may come with a defective battery. Those units either experience shortened battery life or require more frequent charging, according to Apple. If you think your phone is affected, you should visit the Apple support page in the source link to check your serial number and see if it qualifies for free battery replacement.

A new research paper details the efforts of a team at Stanford University who are looking to create a lithium battery that, if successful, could lead to much longer battery life for smartphones and tablets, but it could take several years for that research to yield practical products.

The TYLT ENERGI 2K travel charger, on paper, makes sense. It's got prongs that fold out of the body and straight into a wall charger, so there's no mucking about with USB cables and separate charging warts. Just plug the battery into the wall and charge away. We get that. And if you're an iPhone user, that makes sense. Who wants to carry around a microUSB cable that you might well have no other use for?

Sweet, sweet science is on its way to finding a cure for how lithium-ion batteries (like the one in your phone) lose their ability to hold a charge over time. Researchers at Lawrence Berkeley, Brookhaven, and Stanford have found a pattern to the erosion that happens at both anode and cathode ends of the battery, when previously it was assumed the erosion was uniform.

iPhone owners who need a little extra battery power to see them through have been turning to Mophie for many years now. The current lineup for the iPhone 5 includes the Juice Pack Helium and the Juice Pack Air, and now they're back with this, the Juice Pack Plus.

The mophie juice pack helium is an all new, all lighter and thinner battery charging case for the lighter and thinner iPhone 5. It features a 1500mAh, barely more than the iPhone 5's built-in 1440mAh battery, and when translated into external battery pack terms, that packs roughly an 80% refill charge.

Well known accessory manufacturer Mophie has announced its latest accessory for the iPhone 5. The Mophie Juice Pack Air is the second iPhone 5 accessory to offer prolonged usage by packing an additional battery into a small form case specifically for the iPhone 5

For those whose iPhone batteries lived -- or died -- on the extra power provided by a mophie juice pack case, good news -- mophie has just announced the juice pack helium. Why helium? Because it's lighter than air, as in the previous generation juice pack air, of course. It's a 1500mAh battery, which will replenish an iPhone 5 up to 80%, but it's packed in a case that's svelter than ever before.

At CES 2013, OtterBox announced the Armor Series for the iPhone 4, 4S and 5, their first waterproof case in a long time. The arguably more interesting product OtterBox was showing off at the show was the Defender Series with Ion Intelligence - a new variant with an integrated backup battery and a dedicated iOS application for monitoring how much juice is left in the pack and in your iPhone.

Two images that are thought to be of the battery from an iPad mini have surfaced overnight and they not only look legitimate but the performance figures of the battery seem to stack up too when placed against the new iPad and iPad 2; the images were sent to MacRumors.